Request - Reorder catalog record Place and Time fields so they are in the same order all the time

[falco-rk]

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Describe what you're trying to do

If you enter a single catalog record, Place and Time fields are in this order: Record-Event, Event, Locality, Spatial. If you download a bulkload builder for catalog records, Place and Time fields are in this order: Locality, Spatial, Event, Record-Event. If you browse and edit loaded catalog records, Place and Time fields are in this order: Locality, Spatial, Event, Record-Event. The documentation for how to enter a single catalog record has Place and Time fields in this order: Record-Event, Event, Locality, Spatial.

This is confusing. Can we have them all in the same order? My vote for order is Record-Event, Event, Locality, Spatial but I would accept if they are in a different order as long as its consistent!

@happiah-madson @genevieve-anderegg @campmlc @dustymc

[campmlc]

Yes, I support making this consistent across forms. I've gotten used to the order of Record-Event, Event, Locality, Spatial. This is the locality-event stack from broadest (record-event) to most specific (locality, spatial), but I also would be OK with the reverse order, which might make more sense for new users accustomed to thinking primarily about locality and coordinates. It is possible to reorder these in the single record data entry form if someone wants to. But I agree with consistency as the default.

[happiah-madson]

It has been such a confusing process when I QC my student records and the template I use is in a different order than the data downloads from Arctos. I just barely have all the Time and Place fields straight in my head, and rely HEAVILY on my annotated template, so this additional wrench can cause havoc.

[dustymc]

I don't think there are any technical limitations involved in this, but there are a few social considerations.

1. "Place-time" data are useful for all sorts of things and I don't think there are any safe assumptions about the context in which someone might use them. Certainly catalog items are not a necessary part of the landscape.
2. There are inherit dependencies - localities cannot exist without geography, for example - and those have, up until the most recent bulkloader revision, controlled (ish, probably...) order of appearance. The "natural" order is likely the only scalable approach.
3. Some UI is user-controlled, and I fully expect and hope to have even less control of UI as Arctos grows; investments in reordering might have limited payoffs. (But certainly there are things which can easily be changed, and setting a direction - even if we can't immediately fully implement it - does seem useful.)
4. That logical order doesn't completely survive the current bulkloader/record entry UI (which is generally backwards because that's what was asked for) - eg it's possible to enter data using only event name and never acknowledge (or be forced to view) the existence of anything else.
5. downloads are probably handled differently by various things within Arctos now (I think including user's preferences) - if this is going to result in some requirement for globally ordering CSV, I'm probably also going to ask for tools and support.

Record-Event, Event, Locality, Spatial

Both geography and localities can carry spatial data, this doesn't quite make sense to me.

Vaguely related and in anticipation of a 'thou shalt' flavored resolution, it would be super-useful to have a place for this sort of thing. (Possibly https://handbook.arctosdb.org/how_to/developer-guide.html)

[campmlc]

@mkoo please review. This is an important UI/UX need.

[happiah-madson]

Record-Event, Event, Locality, Spatial

Both geography and localities can carry spatial data, this doesn't quite make sense to me.

This is the literal order of the fields in the "Create Records" data entry and the handbook. I agree with Rosie that it doesn't matter the order, we just need it to be consistent.